Releases

SOAK - GRIM TOWN Double Vinyl w/ 7” / 2 LP / CD IN STORES APRIL 26

26 April 2019

SOAK (aka Bridie Monds-Watson) returns with her 2nd album in 4 years in the form of Grim Town;
bringing with her 4 years worth of growth, introspection and understanding.
Grim Town, the follow-up to her Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut Before We Forgot How To
Dream, which saw her win the prestigious Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, the Northern Irish
Music Prize and the European Border Breaker Award, in addition to being shortlisted for a Q Award.SOAK had, arguably, more to process than most her age. One of the Mercury Prize’s youngest ever
nominees, her debut kickstarted an extraordinary teenage journey.
Her astonishingly assured, emotionally mature songwriting was often hailed as wise beyond its years;
but, as her new album often asks, when do we ever truly shake off those childlike fears, the impostersyndrome,
the outsider-status?
The term ‘to come of age’ lands with so much expectation, but with Grim Town, Bridie dissolves all such
assuredness with imaginative, ambitious, and cathartic results.
It is almost as though the greater soundscape-heavier in places, more pop-focused in others-has givenSOAK the confidence to put her long overdue introspections in the firing line. It’s beauty and brutality is
there from the album open opener, ‘Get Set Go Kid’ which traces the train-tracks out of depression (“I’ve
got to get out, I can’t live here anymore!”) and was as inspired by the audio-visual environmentalism of
Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ as Bridie’s train-obsessed grandad on voiceover duties.
In addition to double LP and CD formats, Grim Town is available in a limited edition double vinyl with a
bonus 7” exclusive to indie retailers.

“Soak exposes longings, fears, traumas and resolve – somethings elliptically, sometimes with disarming
bluntness. Her unrefined sentiment and her unremitting vulnerability shows that she has a lot to teach the
world.” – New York Times

“The voice of her generation … there is beauty and wisdom in SOAK’s music.” – NME

“Sensational…the most auspicious of debuts.” – Mojo ****

“A richly textured record…a quite precocious talent.” – Q ****

“Both innocent and haunted…SOAK defies conformity.” – Guardian ****

The central premise of ‘Grim Town’, says SOAK, is “a dystopia that I’ve created in my brain: me on the
inside, processed into a pretend location. The way I could wrap my head around a lot of what I was going
through was to make it feel like something quite physical and real. Once I had the idea of the album
being an actual location, exploring the dynamics of this town and what it would look or sound like felt like
the right way to give my mental state a personality.” So if debut album ‘Before We Forgot How To Dream’
was conceived as a time-capsule of innocence, vividly capturing those moments in adolescence when
anything felt possible, ‘Grim Town’ perhaps examines the reality: on what happens next after you enter
adulthood (but actually feel more in crisis than ever), and the world around you isn’t what was promised
to you or your generation.
A record about getting lost that you can, also, truly get lost in, ‘Grim Town’ arrives as inspired by the
audio-visual environmentalism of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ as the production of Arcade Fire, Broken Social
Scene or Phoebe Bridgers. With unflinching honesty, Bridie tackles everything from long-distance love,
depression, divorce and social anxiety to the changing modern landscape (sexually, politically,
emotionally). And it’s accepting the jumble of emotions which make you ‘you’ that emerges as the
ultimate message of ‘Grim Town’, with its suitably placeless universe in which everybody’s personal ‘Grim
Town’ looks different, but everybody’s matters.